Friday, February 27, 2009

This isn't going to be a long post, but before it overwhelms other comment sections I wanted to make sure that there was a place to talk about the change to Heart of the Wild:

Heart of the Wild: Stamina bonus changed to 2/4/6/8/10%.

The important thing to note is that it's from 4/8/12/16/20% on live. So it's about a straight 10% nerf.

What does this mean? Does it change gemming strategies or gearing strategies? Eh, not really. Not for most things. Druids still have a very substantial stamina edge over other tanks if they want it.

For normal tanking, we'll still be looking at around 40-42k in BiS gear even after this, depending on what you're gearing for. That's still very high. I'll do more analysis of this later. My suspicion is that DKs will have more armor, better cooldowns, much more avoidance and a bit more stamina than a druid using similar strategies, which should be more alarming. But I don't want to say that definitively until I've actually talked with some DKs and seen how they gear.

For Sarth3D - that really hurts the notion of a druid safely tanking without external cooldowns, at least unless they have jewelcrafting and leatherworking. Well, almost. If you can get to 47k and 345 FR, you should be able to survive with one barkskin and one survival instincts. But the nightmare seed + fire resist pot is out unless you're a JC and a LW.

For antitank: in order to keep the same level of health, you'll need to have something like essence of gossamer equipped. Really, that's about it. You lose about 2-3% DPS from that, and that sucks, but it's not so horrible that you'll be seriously disadvantaged. You'll still be able to tank well and DPS decently in the same gear.

I can only wonder what my role will be in Ulduar. At this point, with the ~6k armor nerf and now a ~3k health nerf, what serious guild is going to pick a Druid bear to tank when Warriors, Paladins, and DKs will be so much better.

I'm already having a tough time, as I pull about 5.5k TPS, whereas the warrior and Pally tank in my guild are pushing at least 2k more. And believe me, it's not for a lack of trying on my part.

I get more and more disheartened about being a bear tank with each successive Lich King patch.

The folks on EJ are pointing out that the all mentions of Savage Defense have been removed from the patch notes in conjunction with this nerf. Speculation is that SotF will be restored to 22/33/66% armor, and the HP nerf will be the only real defensive change. (Which is arguably needed if nothing else changes...)

Thanks for the update. I was initially shocked of course, but I think its fair. We all know our stamina was way too high. For those commenting that the game is over for druid tanks, I can only advise you to grow up. How many times have Blizzard said they want all tanks to tank all content? I mean how many times??? And.... its a ptr for god's sake. Its for testing purposes. Our responsibility is to test and report feedback as honestly and un-egoically as possible. That's how we can help to make the game better for us all. Its a big responsibility.

Karthis et al - I strongly suspect Savage Defense is going to get at least one round of testing. We'll see, but I doubt they're going to remove it and return the armor buff. Armor was still problematic.

I still don't feel that the health druids could get made them desirable as tanks compared to a lot of other things, but that also means I don't really care that we lost it in the first place. That being said, the napkin math I've done indicates warriors are going to take less damage typically than druids in most normal encounters and will have far superior cooldowns that strongly favor the warrior over the druid. The cooldowns will decide things, I think - and that puts druids and paladins at a distinct disadvantage.

My worry about the whole Savage Defense bit was the statement that GC made when it was first mentioned. "As many players have surmised, we want to make gearing as a bear tank more interesting, yet we don't have a lot of room to expand on stamina, dodge or armor."

That sounds to me like "sure you're going to look like crap with that silly old naxx/maly/sarth gear, but once you guys get new ulduar toys everything will be a-ok!"

If that's the case then what the heck am I going to do until I get said gear? Ulduar launches and I want to tank it but who's going to take me in my worse gear state? I really don't want to go cat just to get the gear I need to be a bear... :\

We were getting a little out of hand on the stamina. On Patchwerk the other night, the second offtank never took a single hateful. Afterwards, we realized that I had more HP than he did even after eating a full hateful strike.

I'll hold off on my opinion until we've been in the patch longer. We know things are going to be put in the patch in waves so I'll just wait and see. While we are losing some stamina I know I haven't even worried about it since turning 80 so that 10% loss is a moot point.

All you super raid guild guys may think all these nerfs are fine and dandy, but it's eliminating the rest of us from tanking at all. And frankly, if I had want to dps, I'd have rolled a frickin hunter.

I dont have a single piece of T7.25 gear and raid buffed am over 42k health. 42k is not that hard to get in bear form especially with goss and depending on what profs you have...and if your wondering, I only have 3 pieces of even T7 gear so its not like im running with all of that either.

I do not see it being a big issue if they either let us keep the armor, or increase the savage defense to something like 50% of our AP to give us that bit extra mitigation

Personally, i dont see it as a massive nerf. what worries me far more, as mentioned by kalon, is that the other tanking classes (palas aside) are being made quite superior. if all these 'adjustments' were made in parallel so that each of the tanking classes had similar issues to deal with, then no problem. im just glad ive been collecting a decent set of resto gear :p

The reason I take issue with any nerf to our HP is that it's a nerf for us on magical damage bosses. We're being given NOTHING to compensate for that, and imho we are already not that great at tanking magical damage.

What I want is to be able to tank bosses at a level where I am on equal footing with other tanks in progression content. I've seen nothing to indicate this will be the situation when ulduar rolls out, and I still think we're going to fall flat at the end of T8 when our lack of scaling becomes way too dramatic(assuming SD isn't incorporated).

ps. Do realize a stam nerf is also a indirect nerf to SI/Barkskin/Frenzied Regen Glyph on magic damage encounters.

I think that this is the very wrong patch to try out druid changes. Now we need to focus on new encounters in ulduar and since they are nerfing us without buffing us we will suck and guilds can not benefit from us. Guilds with 2 or 3 druid tanks will be extremely nerfed.

I thought they were giving us back the armor because of the stamina nerf, but it is because they haven;t been able to implement SD yet. As soon as SD comes (probably still this patch) we will see the armor nerf.

Comment from blizzard: they don't want us to be mana sponges since healing is gonna get harder on mana.Sorry but I just totally do not get this.

Way crazy comparison: 2 druids with 50% dodge, same armor and 1 has 200k life, the other has 40k life.The one with 40k life requires much more healing on the same boss; and there is more overhealing because death is imminent.If you keep the 200k life druid at 100k life you will 1: never overheal, 2: death is never imminent so no hard healing needed.So same migitation and avoidance means that the less life you have the more healing is required.

If you don't want us to become mana sponges give us some extra mitigation or avoidance. Give us SD without the armor nerf or something. Don't lower our health.

I always thought highly of blizzard but this proves they are pooping out of their mouths.

Note that imp motw will give 2% to all stats. IMO if they want to balance druids to the same level as other tanks by reducing hp and potentially armor, they need to reduce the ratio of agi to dodge% so that druids can get avoidance more in line of that of other tanks.

I was thinking thinking more along the lines of a bewildered bear trying to figure out if that big metallic disc-thingy might be good as a hat, perhaps with one of his paws caught in one of the straps of it :P

Kheldar; If you mean would it affect my ability to keep tanking the current content? Not too much no. But for progression raiding, you need every edge you can get, and with these changes, bears aren't going to be used at all in progression raiding.

Peter wth you are talking about?? Blizzard is nerfing really bad the tanking druids, they nerf our armor and our stamina. So what we got left? dodge? Druids are the only ones that can't tank every single boss on sunwell before WotLK. Why your are going to grab a druid for tank on raids when they have alsmost the same HP and armor than a war or pld? When war and pld can be more effective since they can block, parry dodge, almost same hp and same armor. when war and pld have better cooldowns and magic mitigation. why your are going to grab a druid for MT? Dk are going to have more hp and armor that druids now. we are going to be left behind again. Well they are buffing our dps but for the ppl that like to be tanking it will hurt os a lot. War and pld are crying because they cant do only 1 encouter and is not that they canot do it is just for druids and dk are easier. Blizzards say that hybrids class cant be the best on specific role and that is fair but what can you tell me aboiut plds on pvp? they have everything you need to be success on arenas.

why is blizzard nerfing the druid community on every single patch? I will like to know what they think when they make this decision and where they are at that moment. The only thing that comes to my mind is they make this decisions when they are in a party drinking and smoking pipe.

Anon - I'm talking about something that many people conveniently blank out of reality: druids were OP with regards to health. It was too big a disparity and it would have gotten bigger. How do you think pallys & warriors feel being so far behind, and knowing that druids & dks are the tank of choice for progression tanking? Its a real issue and we all have to deal with it.

Getting pissed about nerfs is something I feel too. But the game is constantly being rebalanced. Again, because druids were OVERPOWERED with respect to the other tanks. And again, its in test. That means if we fall behind other tanks in our duties we will be buffed. And that's by measurable statistics, not emotional upset. If you choose to assume it's in blizzard's best interest to ruin their own tanking philosophy, then that's your issue.

As an example, post 3.0 patch, pre-wrath, there was a lot of qq about something (removal of green armor, I think). Get pvp gear was the advice from some. Well, the bottom line was that no one had played 3.0 at that point, and when we did, we found the content ridiculously easy, with no need for those green armor items from pvp gear. Blizzard are the same people designing the classes and designing the content, right?

Until as a community we prove that we can or cannot do our job as well as other tanks, its just (emotional) speculation.

So Peter your are telling just for a single fight druids and DK are the tank of choice?? So your are saying druids are OP because of 1 fight? lets talk before BC what was the tank of choice? On BC conteng what was the tank of choice? on WolK for heroics is the tank of choice? So you are saying because druids and DK can tank just 1 fight better than war and pld, they are left behind. If we are going to talk OP lets talk about pld on pvp content but this post is not about pvp so I am not going to say nothing. You need to start tinking on all the fights pld and war already shine and you tell me if druids had the same oportunity on BC content to shine same as war pld.

Last dude: The 3 points for HoTW seems like a fair idea if you ask me. If you nerf a talent into the ground there should be some comeback on the points required to get it. Not to mention that bears, as things stand, will be firmly in OT roles after this patch, freeing up a couple of points to spend on the kitty talents we'll need most of the time wouldnt be a bad idea.

Honestly though I think the 10% nerf is excessive, especially when coupled with the armour nerf aswell, 5% less STA and a 3 point talent would have been a lot easier to swallow. But hey, what do I know.

ThinkTank bio

About Me

Kalon likes playing tanks, no matter how hard he tries to fight it. He is not as hardcore as many but spends a lot of time thinking about WoW, and randomly rants about it now and then. He played formerly on the Argent Dawn (EU) server and was a founding member of Fire and Blood (Quel'Dorei) before joining Casually Serious, a guild devoted to hard core progression on only 8 hours of raiding time a week.
He is a devoted husband, father, and when he has the time programs software.